TOYOTA Commemorative Museum Of Industry And Technology is located in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. This museum is to teach how TOYOTA has contributed to develop vehicle and textile machinery technology.

TOYOTA Group is one of the most famous Japanese companies. There is a museum called TOYOTA Commemorative Museum Of Industry And Technology very close to Nagoya Station. This museum has been selected as the highest rating sights places in Nagoya for 2014 on TripAdvisor. Let’s find out what makes this museum so special!

When you think of TOYOTA, you may think of vehicles...but TOYOTA started their business as a textile manufacturer.

This museum has two pavilions (textile machinery and automobile), that explain the history and technology of how TOYOTA became a gigantic company, its founders’ desires, etc.

How To Get To The Museum?

From Nagoya Station, it will take about 25 minutes to walk. Or you can take a train on the Nagoya Honsen Line in Meitetsu (It stands for Nagoya Tetsudo (tetsudo means railway)) to Sakou Station from Nagoya Station. From Sakou Station, it will take a 3 minute walk to get there.

Admission is 500 yen for an adult and 300 yen for a child to enter the museum. This spacious museum takes at least half a day to walk around. The fee is very reasonable!

Audio guides are available in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean for 200 yen. Most exhibits have both Japanese and English descriptions, but some of them are only available in Japanese, so audio guides may help you to understand exhibits more!

Gigantic Circular Loom At The Entrance

A gigantic circular loom welcomes you at the entrance to the museum.

Sakichi Toyota, the founder, invented this loom in 1906. This symbolic exhibit details TOYOTA’s spirit of research and creation.

Learn The History of TOYOTA Industry

In the first room, you will find the history of TOYOTA Group and the founder’s passion for invention, industry, and technology.

There is a video showing how TOYOTA Group has started their business.

You can choose from Japanese, English, Chinese, or Korean.

Walk Through Textile Machinery Pavilion

This automatic loom is a hallmark of Sakichi Toyota’s invention.

Japan didn’t have the technology to make its own loom, so all weaving machines were imported from Great Britain. Sakichi Toyota’s selfless effort of research created this revolutionary automatic loom. Less equipment and manpower expenses, but the loom’s efficiency was higher than ever… Toyota started offering their expertise in these design techniques to top British industrialists.

What makes this museum interesting is their exhibits are not only about TOYOTA. Their exhibits include the whole history of the textile machine industry and its mechanisms. There are also some brochures for kids’ research. Seeing these great exhibits may stimulate kids to be the next great inventors!

Materials before looming! Interesting...

The exhibit below shows the technique of looming before the industrial revolution.

Look how serious kids get...at the trial looming booth.

There are both Japanese and British textile machines that introduce how their technology evolved over the years.

You can see clearly that weaving technology has gotten better and nicer!

The latest looms are bigger than any other machines...how impressive!

実In these tiny cases, there are some materials of weaving fabrics. Try touching them and feel the differece in each material.

History Of Sakichi Toyota

You will see the history of Sakichi Toyota who was a successful business person but also a great inventor. He acquired 84 patents for his inventions, 13 foreign patents, and 35 utility model patents in his life.

Sakichi, aged 18, decided to dedicate his life to society as a inventor. You can see his passionate dedication to the textile machine industry in chlonological order.

TOYOTA was one of the most successful spinning companies in Japan in Sakichi’s era, but it was shifting in his son’s era to automobile manufacturing industry. Which brings us to Sakichi’s son, Kiichiro’s story...

Sakichi Toyota’s life ended at age 63. His son Kiichiro and son-in-law Rizaburo announced the Five Main Principles Of Toyoda 5 years after his death. This is based on Sakichi’s attitude towards his business and his life.

This principles have been guidelines for preferred courses of action for all employees in TOYOTA Group and remains in use today.

Each principle is very understandable, like “cooperate with the others, work faithfully, and work for the country and society,” “live simply, not showy, and have an inner fortitude,” etc.

The second principle says “your research should predict the trend of the future.” This suits perfectly to TOYOTA, don’t you agree?

TOYOTA’s dedication to the automobile industry with Kiichiro Toyota and how it became the gigantic company in the industry will be revealed at the Automobile Pavilion in the museum!

Written by y_a_j_i

This is Yaji that was born in Nagano and living Tokyo now. I love drinking, especially Japanese sake and Japanese tapas. I will introduce many great restaurants and bars all over Tokyo!

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